Lowell is the most gifted poet of his generation to turn to the stage. Like Schevill, he came to drama through translation, but the way was prepared by the dramatic turn of his lyrics after 1957, with their loosened rhythms and simplified syntax. (p. 280)

[Prometheus Unbound is] syntactically varied, inventive in sound play, and lush in imagery. As Lowell's Phaedra was rendered through Freud, his Prometheus has a contemporary existential consciousness. His language has invigorated two classical tragedies for speakers of English, but his most significant dramatic achievement is the three plays grouped as The Old Glory….

Ostensibly dealing with early American history, Lowell's three plays examine that history through the fiction of Hawthorne and Melville, and he focuses on the image of a flag. Lowell has dramatized stories whose cumulative significance equates Old Glory with its rhyme-word "gory."…

Conceived as a whole, the three plays of The Old...